A New View from the Tenure Track Side

I'm on my second search committee since I started my tenure track job in 2012. The part of me that is still tired from seven years of adjuncting (three institutions, five locations, six to seven courses a term - that's a large part of me that is still tired) wants to cry, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled adjuncts yearning to breathe free (or just to breathe, for that matter) - we have jobs for all!

We don't, of course. And even if we did, we wouldn't hire all applicants.

We're mid-search, so I don't want to say too much. I don't want to discourage those who have already applied, or scare off those who may still intend to apply.

But as of now, we have around 100 applications. 100. For one job with a four-four teaching load in a very rural location that has natural beauty among its charm. (I love it here, but I'm the first to admit it's not for everyone.)

When the search is finished, I'll talk about how the applicants could do a better job of presenting themselves. I know I could have done a much better job - and when I see excellent, professionally presented applications, I learn how I might do better in the future.

But for now, I'd like to address the graduate programs that are sending newly minted PhDs out into the world like lambs to the slaughter.

Please. Offer help to your lambs. Let them toughen into mutton before you let them out into the fragrant meadow that is not the academic job market.

When I see several applications from a prestigious PhD program, either shiny and new or a few years old, and the CVs are so poorly formatted as to be illegible, the cover letters are written to confuse even the most expert of experts in the candidate's specialty, and the font would be charming in a children's picture book, I blame not the candidates so much as the program. And when I see applications that have no relevance to the job description, I blame not the candidates so much as the job market that creates the kind of desperation that causes a zombie-like scatter shot approach to the application process.

Granted, it's not the university's job to spoon feed this information to their graduates, but is a seminar or a writing center workshop too much to ask? We all know the university system is churning out too many PhDs who have little hope of getting good jobs, but couldn't we at least help them? What good is a degree from a top-notch university if they send you out in your sweats and sneakers to seek professional employment?

And, while I'm on the subject, please be thoughtful about the wording of your recommendation letters. Very thoughtful. I read one during the last search in which the committee chair said condescending and sexist things in recommending a female graduate - in total oblivion, I'm sure. Since it was submitted though a confidential portfolio service, the poor woman had no idea she was spreading about a cutesified description of her work and her pedagogy. Our mothers taught us the first rule of writing references - if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

So, Dear Academy, I understand it's a tough world, and there's no reason to believe it's going to get easier in the near future. But please don't add to my disillusionment - help your graduates present the image that your high ratings suggest.

It's That Time of Year

And no, I don't mean Christmas, and no, I will not support the insanity that leads retailers to put out Christmas merchandise before Halloween.

 

I mean the time of year when I get my annual review from my department chair. He observed my teaching last week, he has my student evaluations, and I filled out an eight-page self evaluation, probably giving him even more ammunition to use against me.

 

But I appreciate these reviews, because in the seven years I worked as an adjunct, I never once had a performance evaluation. In one school, I was observed every semester and met with the chair to discuss the results, but there was never any overall evaluation.

 

And why should there be? The purpose of the evaluations is to determine promotion and merit raise issues, and for most adjuncts, there is neither.

 

But they do have the student evaluations to contend with, and that is a serious problem. If it is the only tool administration uses to assess the teaching in the adjuncts' classrooms, they need to consider the reliability of the source.

 

I have always known that students don't take these evaluations seriously. Last year, in the portion asking how the class might be improved, one student wrote, "Have a petting zoo."

 

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Vitae" leads with a case of an adjunct losing her job because of course evaluations. The article also quotations from several of my friends because, I suppose, birds with no feathers flock together.

 

You can read the whole article here.

 

Author Max Lewontin writes:  

For most tenure-track and tenured professors, course evaluations are used as guidance or feedback, a way to tweak their courses based on student concerns. At their worst, the evaluations are an annoyance, as students vent their frustrations or lament a poor grade.  

But for adjuncts, student evaluations often carry much more weight. In a way, that makes sense: Most adjuncts are, after all, hired to teach. But in the absence of other metrics or methods, many colleges use evaluations as a key means—or the only means—of determining whether to renew a contingent professor’s contract.

I have frequently gotten good tips from student evaluations. Probably the best one was that I talk too fast.

And I would like a petting zoo.

    

 

Dear "Whining Adjuncts" - Keep Up the Good Work!

The web is alive with the sound of outrage. In a remarkably tone-deaf letter to the editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Catherine Stukel suggests - no, she flat-out states, that adjuncts may not be getting hired in full-time, tenure-track jobs because they are annoying, they are unlikable, they are mediocre, or they don't fully engage their students. You can read her letter here.

The most outrageous thing she does is attack Margaret MaryVojtko, referring to an article about a "dying, broken-hearted 83-year-old adjunct professor." Stukel is disgusted. She suggests that Professor Vojtko should "put on [her] big girl panties."

Apparently she didn't read the article, because Professor Vojtko was already dead.

She also suggests that, in placing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article in her mailbox, the adjunct-teacher's union at her institution was whining. She never acknowledges that her so-called colleagues were taking action, as she later suggests they do (although unionizing and fighting the Walmartization of higher education is not what she has in mind for them).

And while the story of Professor Vojtko was simplified (in part, I suspect, because of the very limited word count of op-ed pieces)in the Post-Gazette article, and more fully formed stories of her life have been published, Stukel has no interest in finding the facts. Instead, she launches into one of the most appalling versions of blame the victim I have ever seen.

Stukel may be right on some points - if you are desperately unhappy, perhaps you should find another career - or at least, another job. I know of at least one adjunct who was inspired to quit by this article. I suspect that if more adjuncts walked away, and at the very last minute, when full-time schedules had been finalized, things might change. Might.

But Stukel's total oblivion to the system that created legions of "whiners" and the many benefits she receives from it that she would deny the adjuncts on her campus, is something that cannot continue in the ranks of the tenured faculty.

As a tenure-track faculty member who spent seven years in the trenches with the freeway flyers, I have made it my mission to keep the issue in front of both the academic community and its stakeholders: parents, students, fellow citizens desiring a system of higher education that focuses on teaching and learning rather than fancy dorms, athletic facilities, and the over-population of  over-paid administrative suites.

I hope tenured professors such as Stukel will wake up and understand that the very system they benefit from is destroying itself from within. If Professor Stukel hopes for higher education for her children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren, she had better acknowledge that the continued reliance on part-time workers will remove that opportunity within the next generations.

(Note: Cartoon courtesy of  Hugh MacLeod at gapevoid.com)

The Locusts are Singing

My mother used to tell me that the droning of the locusts was a song. The lyrics? Summer's over, summer's over.

So as I'm digging out my pencil box, my plaid skirt, and my lunch bag, getting ready to return to the classroom, I'm reflecting on my summer's work. All to the tuneless song of the locusts.

I will say, it was pretty lazy by my usual standards. I attended a conference, where I presented a paper; I team-taught a week-long workshop for high school teachers; I went to a writers' conference in creative nonfiction, for which I had to write an essay; I developed a survey for a major research project I'm beginning with a colleague; and I proposed a chapter for an edited book which was accepted - all I have to do now is to write it.

I haven't begun the syllabus writing yet, but since I'm usually the last one in the department to send mine to the print shop, that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone - not even the print shop.

I also squeezed in a fabulous trip to Rome, Florence, and Paris with a colleague, and visited my new great niece in Akron.

I know that I have an unusually good life for someone with a PhD in English. I remember the years when I had to beg for summer courses to teach, just to keep a roof over my head. I remember when I had no research agenda or professional development funding or time to do anything but read student essays and sleep.

As I look ahead to the fall 2014 semester, I am excited: I have a new plan for my basic writing courses, I'm teaching a media theory course for the first time, and, as a third year teacher, I feel comfortable at my institution.

I also anticipate teaching an overload, for which I will be paid, but, of course, not enough. I will be in my office 10 hours a week, hoping students will come and talk to me. I will be on at least three committees, a team, and a task force.

And . . .   there's the usual three days of meetings and trainings and orientation events. I used to complain about these days - when I did, my husband said, well, why don't you quit? Why don't you go into another profession? As many professors have done - and then there's this:

I'm being positive right now, so it's he students, I say. I'm in it for the students. 

There's no other reason on earth for anyone to do this job.

And I'm very thankful for every day I spend with them.

After the Deluge

The deluge in question is a long thread that has been running on the Council of Writing Program Administrators' list serve. It started with a simple, practical question and has morphed and morphed again into a discussion of tenure track and non-tenured teaching positions. This is positively a boon for me, as I am speaking at that very group's conference on that very subject on Saturday.

Ironically, if not absurdly, I submitted my proposal in the category of "conversation starter" - not a full paper, but a brief overview of a given topic which is then thrown open to the participants to discuss. It's obvious that this conversation has been started, and is not going to end any time soon.

And it's possible to squeeze out a tiny bit of hope for the future of labor conditions in American higher education. On June 26, adjunct faculty at Point Park University in Pittsburgh voted to join the Adjunct Faculty Association of the USW. Previously, part-time faculty members at Tufts, Leslie, and Northeastern Universities also voted to unionize. There are many more cases of organizing in process, including awaiting the results of Duquesne University's appeal of the union vote to the National Labor Relations Board.

There is currently a petition circulating to urge David Weil, the director of the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor to investigate working conditions and wages of adjunct faculty. (Read and sign the petition here.)

It may not seem like much, but the movement has gained steam quickly since the September 18 article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the life and death of spurned adjunct Mary Margaret Vojtko. I've seen more concern from people outside of academia, and more concern from tenured faculty, many of whom had sat above the fray.

All of those are positive things. Something that strikes me as less positive is a growing support for converting adjunct jobs into non-tenured, full-time teaching lines with benefits. On the surface, and certainly for the poor adjunct traveling to three or more schools, teaching an outrageously heavy load, and still walking the tightrope of the poverty line, it seems like a wonderful idea.

Here are my reservations. First, the online division of Southern New Hampshire University (a huge operation that has been called "the Amazon of education") has tested converting adjunct jobs to full-time. The workload, already heavy, increased. The pressure to follow the rules (respond to every assignment within 72 hours, for example) increased. And when the full-time jobs are created, the university has said that "some" of the current adjuncts will be hired in them.

Granted, there may be good reasons not to hire every single adjunct in a full-time position. Some may, for their own reasons, prefer to remain part-time. But every qualified and capable adjunct who has served the university well should be offered a full-time job, until those jobs are all filled. I was warned by a faculty member at one university where I applied to be an adjunct not to do it, as adjuncts were never considered for tenure-track jobs. Thank you for your service; please apply elsewhere.

The second concern is more urgent. Full-time, non-tenured teachers often have no support, no protection, and no job security. I worked one year in such a position,where I was assured that renewal was almost automatic. Sadly, someone with a strong vote and a weak grasp of my field didn't like the way I taught. I was a campus leader in service, scholarship, and teaching - at least to everyone else, but it didn't matter. In a tenure track job, I would have been protected from such pettiness.

So the conversation, once started, will not hush. Here are the questions I intend to raise on Saturday:

How can writing program administrators:

• create an atmosphere inclusive of contingent faculty
• advocate for better conditions, including increased pay, benefits, and working conditions such as office space, parking, and access to university services
• address gender inequality in contingent issues
• participate in activism on behalf of contingent labor beyond our own campuses
• build alliances among administration, tenured and tenure-track faculty, full-time nontenured faculty, and adjunct faculty, staff, students and parents for the improvement of the working conditions of contingent faculty as well as a longer-term goal of increasing the number of full-time, tenure-track positions?

If you have any answers, feel free to post a comment. And if you're going to Normal, Illinois this weekend, you'll be one step ahead of the rest of the participants at my panel.